For those of us who don’t have much time for Tony Blair, this is going to be a difficult week. As he puts the finishing touches to his resignation speeches, news papers journalists, TV bosses and radio pundits are starting to go into overdrive producing reviews, editorials and in some case, obituaries. The Guardian is no exception, informing us that Blair has “regrets over three wasted years”. Only three Tony, surely not! Lord Falconer, Blair’s “fixer”, offered the view on the PM’s behalf that “up to three years were lost after the 1997 general election” and that he was “to slow to recognise how public services needed to be reformed” and finally that “he (Blair) begins to realise that something more profound is required”. Whilst that may explain every thing up to 2000, what has happened with the last seven years? If Tony has no regrets for the state of the NHS, education, the welfare system and Iraq, then he has a very tainted and obscure view of his legacy. However, it is not only Lord Falconer who is happy to comment on Blair’s time in office, as Lord Kinnock is of the view that any advances over the last ten years will be “clouded, even possibly obscured by the association with Bush”. David Blunkett, however, is less critical, stating that it will take up to 20 years for people to value his premiership, comparing the boss he twice had to resign under as a “prophet”. Blunkett could possibly be right, but only due to the fact that in 20 years people might have actually forgotten how bad Blair was!
However, with Labour on track to loose more than 500 councillors, the SNP on the brink of usurping the Edinburgh parliament, and more and more soldiers dying in Iraq on a daily basis, there remains the possibility that it will take a future Labour leader 20 years to rebuild the Party! What will people think then?
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